Neiska

Uh, you are missing some of the Pet Aura IOs there hon, they are in the recharge pet section. (Yes they work on pets!) You can also add some damage procs to your t1 and t3 robo pets, the smashing one. It doesn't look like much but they add up!

Mhm. Recently made my first /Marine, a Robo/Marine. And yea, its stronk. Compared to some secondaries it might be "too" strong honestly. Been chill-mode leveling her, no exp boosters, no power leveling, mostly doing story/contact missions and doing ouros stuff when I hit a dry spell. Need to practice and learn the set and all that. But ya, its... very strong.

Mhm, kind of the same for everyone. I just really like being able to solo +4/8 difficulty once I am all incarnated up at 50. Not all builds can, even then. I am hoping Robots/FF is one of them. I have a few that can but its a bit of a slog because it takes so long to chew down the EBs. But I am tinkering with a demons/marine that looks promising damage-wise.

Not saying the data is wrong but I find it surprising. Energy is middle of the pack? And my Savage Melee is one of my best brutes. One of my best tankers is Fire Melee though. But am surprised to see that Martial Arts and Titan Weapons are on top for brutes. Much as I love the themes of Dark Melee and Spines, seeing them at the bottom makes me a sad Neiners. = (

Beast/Radiation MM? Both pretty low as far as MMs go. I've heard Wind Control is pretty blah too but never played that one.

Oh, well many well built builds can do that. Brutes are likely great for that, Tankers too. You could make almost any of the top performing pairings work. Personally my best pairing was Savage/Bio, but its a bit of a late bloomer.

If by large mobs you mean giant monsters/AVs, only some ATs and powers can, its mostly a case of bringing the right toolkit. You need some form of sustain, debuffs, but most importantly either a lot of damage or a good bit of -regen. AVs and GMs both regenerate a lot. I am not familiar enough with brutes to offer a specific setup, but I imagine Energy Melee might be great at it, its the strong single target set. But keep in mind, the builds that are good at soloing the big targets often arent the best at other things, like speedy/fast teams or AoE stuff. To my mind its a kind of balance. A Robot/Traps MM can solo the big stuff, so can an illusion/radiation Controller, but those aren't really speedy or fast. Fantastic soloers though if you like big game hunting! There really isn't a single AT or power combo that can "do everything." But some come close!

I have a question - How far have you managed to push these? Are they +4/8 soloable and so on? I have one but only got to mid 20s i think, never pushed higher content or tried to solo harder things with /FF setup. Are they viable?

Well ya, I meant new and/or reworked.

Sure, not everything new is strong. But often is. Energy Melee is one of the strongest ST out there, Electric Affinity is one of the best for mms, I only just started a /marine and honestly it feels too good compared to some of its lower sets like /radiation or /pain. Not all of the updates were BAD, most weren't. I just wish they would fix the weak stuff first, before trying to curb the top performing things. A lot of the stuff thats at the bottom has been at the bottom for a long time now.

Oh, i dont mean running around with it constantly on because ya, you loose a lot - maneuvers, tactics, supremacy, repulsion, etc etc. But it certainly has its uses. Hence why i said you could play it a few ways. Personally my favorite is group fly but not everyone likes that.

Its not just you, theres a current problem on the forums with uploading files, both mids and screenies. Theres a topic about it elsewhere on the forums.

See, heres the thing - I wouldn't be opposed to them changing things, if they fixed the stuff that relied on them. We have sets that are clearly strong (mostly new stuff) while the old stuff like spines sits there forever and remains untouched. And anything we players do within our own ability to make things good gets hammered. Its like they want there to be useless sets? But what confuses me more than that, is that lets not pretend that when they have an option (like procs) that everyone has the same access to it - the good builds as well as the bad ones. And all too often changes like this hits the bad builds HARDER than the good ones. You don't base balance around the top-end of things, you do it from the middle and go from there. But a lot of these changes make the good stuff even better, and the bad stuff even worse. An example would be the mastermind primary shake-up - the one that needed it most (beasts) remains entirely untouched. And it was dead last before, now its REALLY in last place. And I disagree that the balance is better. Only changed so other things are stronger. Some things are stronger than they were before. Many things are weaker. That's not "balance." And personally, I think chasing "balance" is kind of a fools errand in the first place in a game such as this. Because it's impossible to be balanced against every enemy in every situation in every AT with every enhancement and every build. I'm not saying they shouldn't try, but to me they are focusing on entirely the wrong things. Especially when we take things like Incarnates into the equation. For all this discussion of "balance" the meta for the top-end content has remain largely unchanged and affects pretty much all the middle-ground stuff, like the fresh-50s. Another example is that not every AT can solo +4/8, and changes like this doesn't enable more builds to do that, it actually takes away from the ones that can. Which to my mind isn't balancing the game at all, its taking things we had before and taking them away, much like the several changes to the AE. It doesn't make the game more challenging, or unique, or special. All it does is add a bit more to the hamster wheel. Make players have to work harder for the same things they had before and call it "progress." When to me that isnt progress at all, that's going backward.

Same here. Can't share mids builds or attach screenshots either to the forums or personal messages.

When I made a vampire I took inspiration from Stokers - "I give you life eternal. Everlasting Love. The power of the Storm. And the Beasts of the Earth." So my vampire was a Beast/Storm MM. I didn't get very far with it, and I don't think there was much synergy to speak of. It was when I first started playing on homecoming, so I know a lot more now than I did back then. But I wanted a classical vampire vibe to it.

My main concern if they fiddle with proc stuff, is some builds or setups really lean on procs to make them work. I just made a pet-less crabby build with lots of damage procs, one of my first ones that can solo 4/8 with EBs without having to bend over backwards to do it. Then there's stuff like Super Strength builds that rely on procs to do damage during their crash periods, and so on. A friend of mine runs a widow that uses a lot of procs as well. If they over-correct, it might really hurt some builds that really need them to do harder content.

Here is a quick Robot/FF MIDs I cobbled together. Not sure if this is optimized but should be a great "ballpark" look, tying to focus on your "standback" and "hands free" style. So first off, this build has very high defenses. (In this screenie Weave is toggled off) this is because as @Maelwys recently shown me, the Clarion Radial DOES affect the protector Bot's Shield Bubble. As its slotted, the protector bot should provide 25.47% DEF on top of other things, so Weave isn't needed. I did include group fly (largely out of habit) but you can certainly replace it with something else, like maybe medicine for a self heal possibly? The build also has Dark Embrace for Resists (fills in the RES holes very nicely!) and the Soul Tendrils immobilize - I consider some form of Immobilize near mandatory for Robot MMs due to the fire patches, but then again the fire patches did get hit hard and isnt as good as it once was, so you can likely change this out. But I still keep it because I really hate having runners. The way I see it, playing this build has 3 "modes" - 1. Group Fly to hover-mind with your pets. 2. On the ground with Repulsion field on, using knockback attacks to push things away from your pets. 3. Personal Force Field mode - with this toggled, you are incredibly durable, but you can only use self-affecting powers. So no group fly, no maneuvers, no tactics, etc. But here is another snip for the values with PFF mode ON - So when in super-turtle mode, you are DEF capped, RES capped to most things, in Bodyguard Mode, etc etc. Plus keep in mind, Damping Bubble gives a lot of protection from Debuffs too, and the Clarion gives lots of Status protection. Pretty much the only things you really have to worry about is END and Recovery debuffs. Which altogether passes many Tanker builds in how fantastically tough it can be. Anyway, just wanted to provide a mock-up for you to look at. I have seen other builds that favors Force-Bomb procs and the like. Another thought I had was I noticed with /FF you can actually take Dark Mastery and see how well the Disorient/Stun works from stacking Force Bomb and Dark Pit, both of which are ranged AoE Mag 2 Stuns which should stack. Which, if they do, (and I think they will) could make your super-tank MM even tankier if you are stunning things regularly. But I don't have a build for that made, but its a thought. But yea, Robot/FF looks like it can be ridiculously durable and has options for hands-free playstyle too. Hope this helps!

Said by others here already, /FF is effectively MM Hands-free mode. All you really do is refresh your buffs. Thats about it. You can take other powers to fill things out but that's optional. Robots is the traditional pairing, and the two together can have quite a bit of knockback. But it is very passive. Some like that, some find it boring. If you ever played the diablo 2 druid summoner where you just summon things and watch them to everything, its a lot like that. /Traps is very much "plant the flag" or "fortress defender" style. You basically make a kill box and anything that enters that killing zone is at a big disadvantage. So it isn't very "stand off" if you want to play at range. /Time can be built to play at ranged as well. It has lots of +DEF, two different ways to slow things way down, some buffs, and a heal. But one thing I have not seen mentioned yet is Group Fly. If you pick an all ranged set like Mercs or Robos, once you get group fly that massively cuts down on how many things can attack you in many circumstances. Not all but most. Some maps have low ceilings like caves or office maps. Some enemies like Arachnos have a lot of ranged attacks. But in many situations just hovering just out of range means everything you are fighting might get 1 or 2 ranged attacks and then they are stuck waiting. If you are willing to use a flying MM setup, that really opens up a lot for secondary options. I'm not sure if group fly falls into your definition of "stand off" But, if it does, probably the king of "stand off" MM setups would be a flying Robot/FF build. Lots of DEF, protection from debuffs, drone to heal robots, and you kind of just sit back and watch the robots pewpew things down. Mercs/Time could be another strong group fly contender. /Storm has a lot of knockback, and good damage. But I don't have much experience with /Storm myself. I played one and didn't much care for it personally. But you could make something like a robots/storm and specialize in knockback attacks. As far as more pools for "stay away from me" - Field Mastery has quite a bit of knockback as well with Power Blast, Energy Torrent, and Explosive Blast. Just me musing here, but I think the most "standback" MM setup would be - Robots/FF, with Whirlwind from Speed pool (another knockback toggle), with field mastery goodies. Between you and your robots you would stack a lot of Knockback very quickly, and it would be far safer than /Storm. Another option with /FF is taking the stealth pool. I mean, you aren't doing much anyway? So once you throw out your buffs you can just watch everything progress while you just hang back and watch. I'm not 100% positive on this one as I have never really tested much with stealth on a Mastermind, mostly just the Celerity + Stealth enhancement. But as I understand it, once pets and buffs are out, you could just hide. Giving commands or doing anything causes stealth to drop, but you could in theory just hover above and let the robots do their thing if you were feeling particularly lazy. It might not be a terrible idea to have both Group Fly and Stealth on a Robot/FF, just so you have options for different situations. Hope this helps!

Call it a wild crazy hunch that it takes skill to multibox 3 Masterminds effectively. The pet AI does much of the heavy lifting, but not all. You still have to manage pet commands, buffs, debuffs, so on and so forth, at least if you want to maximize your power and efficiency. Personally, I consider multiboxing a solo activity. And I find it to be quite fun. No one is asking you to accept it or even play it yourself, but "cheap and lazy?" I think not. Not all setups are 3 spines/fire brutes with 1 power on auto-use. Besides, experimenting with different team makeups, primary/secondary parings and so on is quite fun. "Take the time to level like other players?" You speak as if these things are mutually exclusive of one another. If I am making another /time MM, then I know quite well what I am doing and if I want to speed level them to 50 in an evening that's my business. But by the same token, I have only just started playing the /marine secondary. And since it is new to me, I am leveling almost entirely solo and primarily through Ouros, doing all the contact/story missions that I missed. I'm not even using EXP boosters either. I am trucking along at level 24 now and still learning the set. I do this explicitly because I am un-experienced with /marine, and I don't want to power level myself and not have a clue how to play it at high level play. People are allowed to do both things. And neither one is wrong. If someone rushes a set or build they are unfamiliar with, dumps the time and inf in gearing it up, but have absolutely no idea what they are doing with it, then I say that's their problem. And to be blunt, not anyone else's business. "But then we are stuck with them on a team" some like to say. To that I would point out that I have been stuck on teams with unskilled people who most likely DONT multibox. If anything, there are MORE of them. And more people who were not power leveled either. Just because someone "played the game" in a manner you approve of, does not magically make them a high skilled (or low skilled) player. Not everyone plays at the same skill level. And that's okay. I would even say, that is the normal state of things and to be expected. Want to know what I think is even cheaper/lazier? Wanting to do all these team activities, but not being willing to start or lead them, and then complain about it. Want to enforce rules and hold people to standards? Start your own team. And do everyone (including yourself) a favor and announce the terms if there are any. So people who don't meet them (as well as don't care for them) can avoid joining, in which case everyone will likely enjoy the game more.

Also very true! Quicker and easier. But my main point was to re-use enhancements from characters don't play anymore. If all you do is buy then yea, you gonna need lots of inf. But if you recycle? Not so much! Just takes bit of time to keep stuff organized.

Here's the thing that I rarely see brought up in discussions such as these - there are other factors other than how much money/currency someone can earn, and how much things cost. To my mind the other factors are - 1. How many alts/ungeared characters a player has - basically, the more ungeared alts you have, the more money you need to bankroll those alts. If you only have 10 characters, and only play those 10 characters, you may not need very much. And let's not forget that once a character is fully kitted out, anything/everything you make is a net positive gain. Basically, the longer you play your 50s, the more money you will make/have saved up, to the point if you play 50s long enough you may not to farm "at all" in order to fully purple out your next character. Aside from buying new things, or crafting new things, there is actually very little "upkeep" costs in this game. No "rent" to pay. No repair costs. No INF penalty for death, etc etc. No money sinks at all besides the AH/NPC stores. Thats literally it. So lets not forget that either. 2. How long a person plays - different players have different amounts of free time to enjoy a hobby. Someone may have all week to play. Someone else may only have a couple hours after work each day. And yet another person may only have a couple hours an evening on the weekend. But I think everyone would agree that essentially the more time you have to play, the more money you "can" make. Not a guarantee though, that can also mean the more you spend. But time played is also a factor to be considered when balancing an economy. 3. If you have lots of old characters you dont play anymore, it might only cost you the amount of the unslotters to move things over. I actually use 3 characters as "stuff holders" because there isnt enough space in storage. I use mail, auction house, etc all as storage. When I make a MIDs build, I have an "empty crate" that I use for "character prep." I search through all the stuff im sitting on or have spare, before I spend anything. I won;t buy things unless I need to. And ill put everything in the "prep box." Then Ill use unslotters on old characters, or converters to get the part of the set I want, etc. Only after i search through all my stuff, all my characters/unplayed alts, and if i find im still missing something, then do i go buy it. Honestly if you are diligent and organized, you may not need much money at all once you have a selection of alts. Not ever new character needs a "fresh" set of stuff, if you have stuff you aren't actively playing on other characters. If you juggle these methods - play your 50s for awhile, and use old 50s you don't want anymore to gear up new 50s, well, all you really need are the unslotters. Which are essentially free if you use merits. So, technically, once you have a page or 2 of 50s, you may not to actually buy anything if you are willing to spend the time moving stuff around. To me, simply not spending the INF you get is the REAL money-maker that people don't seem to talk about. Now if you are contantly making new 50s every few days, then ya, you are going to need to fund them. At least if you want them all purpled up. But I think many of us have 50s that are years old now, I know I still play a few of my oldest ones. And since I dont actually need anything for them, anything I make goes right into the pile. So its really kind of win-win. Personally, if people are concerned about market balancing, I think the biggest fix wouldn't be to adjust prices/inf earned, but to turn on stuff like Base Costs. That alone would be a regular bill that many would have to bankroll. And it makes sense - big bases should/would cost a lot to maintain. (Even super heroes get an electric bill etc.) I would support something like that before reducing the INF people get, which has been adjusted several times already. But there quite literally is no moneysinks/reoccuring costs in this game at all.

Thank you. Thats a bummer to hear! Dont think its worth taking just to keep pets alive if it only ever affects minions. X.X

Reading this thread I've actually learned a good bit about how CC/Mag works. I have yet to actually make an AT dedicated to it, (mostly because I am a solo player and wasn't sure how fast/effective soloing as a controller or dominator would be.) But I do have a question for the CC big brains - Lately I have been experimenting with CC on Masterminds, and my latest has been taking Oppressive Gloom from Soul Mastery - it's an Aura toggle with a Mag 2 Stun effect, and how I have it slotted will last 19.12 seconds. My question(s) is - 1. How often is it "applied" - meaning how fast does the Mag stack up? 2. Does Notoriety/difficulty (+0, +1, +2, +3, +4 etc) affect enemy protection, or is it always the same? I'm just wondering how the math works out, going by this - Lets say I am soloing as a MM on +4/8 difficulty, and an Elite Boss has a 6 Protection. My gloom is Mag 2, so does it take effect after 3 "tics" (Mag 2 + Mag 2 + Mag 2 = 6) and if so for how long, does it count from the first application (the first Mag 2) or the one that "beats" its protection? Napkin math here, but lets say it "tics" every second, so after 3 tics it applies, which if from the first "tic" is counted, it reduces the 19 second stun down to 16? Not sure if my numbers are right or if I am understanding it all correctly here, hence my question. My reason for taking Oppressive Gloom is it's another additional layer of quasi protection for pets. I'm not expecting to lock everything down like a dedicated controller might but reducing the number of attacks against pets are always a good thing in my book. Especially if its entirely passive and requires no power activation/spamming a power to do so, since it's a toggle. Thanks bunches in advance

Personally, if it was up to me, I would separate tanks and brutes like this - Make tanks the solid, consistent, steadfast and reliable option. Pretty much how they perform now. And make Brutes the high risk/high reward tank/threat. Increase their damage more than what it is now, but with that, also make them take more damage once it gets beyond a certain point. They would need some kind of tool to mediate/control that. Sort of like rage up to 60% is fine, but beyond that and they start getting -res penalties or something of that nature. With a "rage dump" power that would reset it to zero and let them build it back up again. That way, some builds could stay at max rage if they wanted to but would also take more damage in the process. And those that wanted to avoid that in certain situations could "dump" early before that point. It might not even need to be just DAMAGE either, maybe a modifier to melee effects would work too. Like a stronger -tohit debuff from dark melee, maybe a bigger dot from savage and spines, a more powerful slow from ice, so on. Maybe if all of the brutes additional effects were stronger when raged at a certain point could also work. That way people could build more around these special effects, instead of just damage set of choice and survivability of choice. There could possibly be some real synergetic builds if brutes were turned into a quasi-debuff tanker kind of class. Ergo - make brutes the riskier, but damaging and aggressive tanker. Want to hold threat and do more damage? Sure. But you are going to risk yourself by "pushing the envelope." I'm not sure if something like this is even feasible with all the different combat mechanics in play. I also imagine such a thing would be a pain to create, especially with the current dev team. The damage boost would have to be worth the penalty though, and that's where it gets tricky to balance out. Honestly this suggestion is more just me musing. But if we had a magic wand that could make anything possible, I think something like this for brutes could be worthwhile. You could even make the penalty be different things for different sets - some might have a -res penalty, or a -def penalty, so on. Maybe even an increasing -max hp debuff or something like that. Even a penalty to debuffs or CC might work too. Something to further differentiate the sets on brutes, more than "x sets good on tankers, x sets good on brutes." And this would give an entirely new form of gameplay that many might find engaging. Being the tank can sometimes be a chore or boring. At least this way people who prefer more interactive play but want to tank have it. But if people wanted something that set "brutes apart" then I think something like this might do it. Sort of like the old Barbarian tabletop where they could rage and do more damage but got armor class penalties when they did so. I make no claims that this would be fair or even balanced. And I expect such a system for brutes would require a lot if big brains to compare notes and math on. But at least it would be "something" that would definately set brutes apart from the rest - Tankers would still be the most durable, scrappers would have crits, stalkers still have all their tricks, and brutes would have the increasing damage (or effect)/penalty feature.